Daybreak: Israel Feeling Iran Attack Safer

• New reports and the emerging official Israeli consensus have it that a military attack on Iran would actually not provoke massive, debilitating retaliation from the Islamic Republic. [NYT]

• At a debate last night in Florida, the Republican frontrunners laid into President Obama’s dealings with Israel. Mitt Romney reiterated the “threw Israel under the bus” line from the 1967 borders speech last May. [JPost]

• Sheldon Adelson, who along with his wife has now given $10 million to a pro-Newt Gingrich Super PAC, denies (through an aide) that he is trying to buy off the presidency. [NBC]

• Even as he sounded more bellicose notes, in a speech President Ahmadinejad also acknowledged the havoc that sanctions and the looming oil embargo are wreaking on Iran’s economy and currency. [NYT]

• Though he resigned as top Middle East adviser, Dennis Ross—long seen as the most pro-Israel voice in the White House—retained his security clearance and still advises the president from time to time. [Haaretz]

• The West’s favorites from both sides, President Peres and Prime Minister Fayyad, met at Davos. [IMEMC News]

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I used to argue that a war against Iran would be foolish, agreeable though it would be in theory. Iran is too large and too well armed to permit a war without enormous risk. And I would not like to see great harm come to Iran or Iranians, for they have been a big part of my life since my teens. But the current regime is one of the few things I would call truly evil, both for Iranians and outsiders, especially Israelis. They are not fit people to have nuclear weapons or the means of acquiring any. They kill viciously and without cause. A man may be hanged there for a few lines of verse, a woman for kissing the wrong man, a teenager for belonging to the wrong religious group. If there is a war – and I now hope there will be one – it must not stop at stopping the nuclear facilities. It must wipe out a dark, immoral and arrogant establishment of clerics and their supporters. Iran is one of the loveliest countries in the world, with a culture that is overpowering, poetry and architecture and music that are among the world’s finest. Let’s help the people of Iran regain the qualities that let them built a great civilization and take away these self-appointed monsters who tell God what his will should be.

Thinkingsays:

February 2, 2012 - 8:22 pm

Ohh, so why is a child, who is orphaned or loses a leg or arm (or both)or gets burns or whatever, in all this mess.
this child who may have had parent/s is innocent.

Maybe we should all stop and think like a child, we are all the same until an adult imposes “rules” then the Adult opens a bank account.

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